ALL forms of capitalism are bad

Liberal and progressive activists are trying to tweak our economic system with reforms, to make capitalism fair, humane, and sustainable. In their constant battle against “unfettered capitalism” or “predatory capitalism” or “corporate capitalism,” they believe they are struggling toward some other sort of capitalism, a healthy and enlightened capitalism, which surely must be just past the horizon. Their intentions are good, but that’s not enough. Their efforts are wasted, because their maps are wrong; that fabled land of healthy capitalism does not exist. Bourgeois democracy cannot function as advertised, because the ideas in its advertisement actually contradict each other.

NO form of capitalism can be fair, humane, or sustainable, and so we need to endcapitalism. To see that, we need better maps. I’ll have to speak in abstract terms, about some fundamental principles shared by all forms of capitalism. The ideas that I’ll present are few and simple, but nevertheless they may be difficult to understand, because they are entirely contrary to the myths we’ve been taught by the news media.

The problem is broader than capitalism. It is the institution of private property, which began 10,000 years ago. But for 200,000 years before that we shared everything of importance, and that’s still our basic nature. To get back to it, we just need to dispel modern myths about economics.

First, we’ve been told that capitalism is freedom and democracy. But the opposite is true. Privately owned workplaces are little dictatorships, and few of us have any alternative but to work in one of them. In contrast, sharing does not require dictatorship; that has been demonstrated by the Zapatistas, the civil war Catalans, and the early Christians.

We’re told that the market is efficient, but in truth it is extremely inefficient. It can only be efficient concerning costs that are measured. A market price is negotiated by a buyer and a seller, but they do not consult any third party who might also be affected, who might have to bear some of the resulting costs. Those are called externalized costs, or externalities, because they are outside the measurements and computations considered in the negotiation. They are commonplace – – for instance, during the Wall Street crash of 2008, traders often reassured each other with “IBGYBG,” which stood for “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,” meaning that some third party would be left holding the bag of shit. Mainstream textbooks on economics gloss over externalities, as though they were something minor, but in fact they are enormous: War, poverty, and ecocide are externalities, and ecocide will cause the extinction of our species if it continues much longer. A whale is worth more money dead than alive; that’s why the whales are dying; that’s why everything is dying.

We’ve been told that capitalism is progress, but the opposite is true. Our basic scientific breakthroughs come from government-sponsored labs in universities or in the military, which are run as though under socialism: Researchers’ pay is based on hours worked, not on how much profit their inventions may bring. We’ve been told that money and competition are good motivators for creativity, but sociological experiments have proven just the opposite to be true; money and competition are extrinsic motivations that displace intrinsic ones and thereby destroy creativity.

Progress improves efficiency; that is true under any economic system. Automation is inevitable, and that would be a good thing if we all shared its benefits. But in our present system, that just brings wealth to the few people who own the workplaces and the robots; for the rest of us it means layoffs, not leisure.

The exploitation of our labor is a special case of a more general phenomenon, the exploitation of all commerce. We’re told that capitalism means opportunity for everyone, but just the opposite is true. Market transactions favor the party who is in the better bargaining position, and so they increase economic inequality. They concentrate wealth and power in the hands of just a few people, who come to control everything – – the government, the workplaces, the news media. They even control the market, and so any “free” market won’t stay that way for long. Economic inequality in the USA today is far, far greater than most people realize. The middle class is shrinking, and homelessness is increasing. This is not due to cheating or “corruption,” but rather due to the basic principles of the system. That is evident when we look at the same forces at work, in simplified form, in the board game Monopoly. That game always ends with all the players but one totally impoverished, even if no one cheats.

The powerful have told us all about noblesse oblige, about how they feel a duty to the less fortunate, but just the opposite is true. We live in a plutocracy, not a democracy. A recent study by some Princeton scholars showed that public policy always reflects the wishes of the very rich; it reflects the wishes of workers only in those cases when they happen to be in agreement with the very rich. One exception was the New Deal, a concession to workers which Franklin Roosevelt passed in order to save capitalism from revolution and avoid much larger concessions; the New Deal was unraveled over the next few decades.

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The powerful are corrupt. We can see that in arrogant workplace managers, brutal police, psychopathic soldiers, abusive prison guards. This works in both directions: On the one hand, those who are already corrupt seek power, and they are rewarded with it in our crazily competitive, dog-eat-dog system. But on the other hand, those who already have power over others are made corrupt by it, even if they did not start out corrupt. This was demonstrated most clearly in the Stanford Prison Experiment: Its “prisoners” and “guards” were randomly chosen from students who had tested as psychologically normal. Apparently, people with power over others feel a need to justify their power to themselves, and then they come to believe their own justifications, generally some sort of authoritarianism or social darwinism. Those justifications are believed by Republican voters, and so they believe it’s a good thing that their politicians are working for the very rich. Democratic voters believe a different lie, namely, that their politicians are not influenced by the big donors with whom they dine and sleep.

But our economic system doesn’t just cause psychological damage to the powerful. It damages the rest of us too, though the damage is so commonplace that we don’t notice it. Separate property means separate lives – – you keep your stuff in your house, and I keep my stuff in my house – – and God help the homeless, for no one else will. This teaches us that I don’t need to care about your well being; apathy becomes the norm; our economic system is based on not caring about others. We blame the unfortunate for their bad luck, because that is easier than facing the fact that we might be next, that the world is unfair and that we don’t know how to make it fair. But this means we must harden our hearts toward those who are less fortunate, and we end up applying the same standards to ourselves: We have no value except monetary value, and so none of us is able to feel truly loved or loving. We are medically damaged by the stress we feel over not having control over our lives. To gain some feeling of control, some of us take our frustrations out on others; this is a cause of domestic violence. Meanwhile, modern technology makes weapons ever more readily available; it is no wonder that random public shootings have become commonplace. The only thing that can make us safe is a culture in which everyone cares about everyone else, no one gets left behind, and no one wants to hurt anyone else. But what we have, for now, is apathy.

The ruling class has been driven mad by the market. Perhaps the clearest proof of this was a few years ago, when the Arctic began melting rapidly. That should have been a wake-up call: We need to phase out fossil fuels quickly, before global warming kills us all. But instead the ruling class said, “oh, goody, now it will be so much easier to extract fossil fuels from the Arctic!”

It’s not entirely the fault of the ruling class. They don’t have much choice in this. The market compels them to compete against each other in offering short-term profits to investors, disregarding any consequences. Any big player who disobeys the market quickly loses the competition, and is replaced by some other big player. And if we somehow locked up all the plutocrats, but continued with private property, within a short time we’d have a new batch of plutocrats. What we need to overthrow is not just the big players, but the whole idea of trade. We need to learn to share everything – – admittedly, an enormous change in our way of life, but the alternative soon will be no life at all.

Our greatest dangers are that the revolution will come too late (after the ecosystem has collapsed) or too soon (before people have understood what enormous changes are really needed). So we need to get more people talking about these things, right now. Join the conversation.

ABOUT THE AUTHORERIC SCHECHTER, a former professor of mathematics with Vanderbilt University, is a senior contributing editor to The Greanville Post and activist for genuine democracy in the Nashville (Tenn.) area.

WITH SELECT COMMENTS

Kerry BassettWhy cannot it not be the fault of the ruling class? Their concept of the future is mirrored by the illusion that their wealth will insulate them. We of course know it will not. Great article Eric!

Eric SchechterBut to overthrow them, we are going to need a lot of us. And if we only overthrow the rulers, without overthrowing the system, the system will just get a new bunch of leaders. And to overthrow the system, we need to understand it. Which means you need to repost my article. Some of you have already done that.

Eric SchechterDiana, my point is that each individual member of the “big players” cannot bring down the system. Any who try will merely lose their “big player” status. And there’s no way they will get unified to bring down the system together. So we need to get unified to bring down the system together.

Eric SchechterNo, Kerry, I don’t want to change it to that. I want to emphasize that the problem is in the system, not in individuals. If we somehow managed to lock up all the plutocrats, but we continued with private property, in a short time we’d just have a new batch of plutocrats.Diana GwinnCuba apparently didn’t wait for everyone to get on board with the new system. “Behind these changes also is the fierce will of the Cuban revolutionaries who didn’t wait until “civil society” had matured before they took gun in hand and overthrew Batista. No other country in Latin America or the Caribbean made as much social and economic progress in as short a time as Cuba did in the early and middle years of the revolution.This progress was made at the expense of the rich and many middle- class Cubans. The Cuban revolution followed, in other words, the opposite trajectory of the “trickle-down” policies of recent US administrations such as Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Resources in Cuba were diverted from the cities into the impoverished countryside. The Cubans who did not want to make a sacrifice in the name of social justice fled to Miami.Cuba’s experiment in socialism may or may not survive the US embargo, the end of Soviet support, or the current economic crisis, which affects not only Cuba but every developing, agriculture-based country. But whatever the eventual fate, the model that has existed will continue to inspire Latin Americas for generations to come.” http://www.columbia.edu/…/state_and_revolution/cuba.htm

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Thomas Baldwin 4 January 01:09 I will read your new essay carefully and comment and understand the title represents your position. It got my attention but I’ll give you my opinion as to whether it might compete with those of Hedges and Klein who you have severely criticized lately.

Thomas, you may have misperceived what I was saying about Hedges and Klein. I am grateful for their work — they are both making positive contributions. But I also see some imperfection in their work, and so there is at least one way in which I wish they would change a bit. I have been disappointed, because they are both in such an excellent position to say “all forms of capitalism are bad,” but they both fail to say that. Instead they have taken ambiguous positions.

Hedges says “we need revolution” and “our present form of capitalism is bad,” but he simply refuses to address the question of whether some other form of capitalism might be better. Thus, he’s not describing what kind of revolution he wants. It occurs to me that perhaps his ambiguity is intentional; in this fashion he may be reaching a wider audience.

Klein’s ambiguous position is more complicated. I don’t know quite how to describe it. She seems to jump back and forth. She says we need deep change, not just superficial change; she says we need a wholly new worldview; she lists a thousand ways that capitalism has been ecocidal. But she never says revolution, and she never says capitalism is inherently ecocidal; thus she leaves open the possibility that the new worldview could consist of some reformed version of capitalism. I guess she, too, is intentionally ambiguous, as an effort to reach a wider audience.

Of the two, I find Klein to be the more frustrating one. Hedges really only addresses concrete events and tactics — he doesn’t talk about theories of economics — and so he doesn’t tantalize me with any hints about what kind of revolution. But the final chapter of Klein’s book is full of those tantalizing hints. What does she mean by a wholly new worldview? Can it be that secretly she has the same vision that I have?

I have become convinced that we are more likely to get the right kind of revolution if we explain to people that capitalism IS inherently ecocidal. And the explanation doesn’t have to be long or complicated. David Suzuki summed it up with one word: “externalities.” (But I don’t think he mentioned “capitalism” or “socialism” or “revolution” in that 4-minute film.)

If I could just get Hedges or Klein to say a few sentences about externalities, I would be very happy.

Thomas Baldwin Fair enough and we should all urge that. But I have followed those two for some years now and observed their evolution which has also been mine. It is the way you first discounted their work which has been a problem for me. The main article which was published at Truthdig did not do that. We don’t have to always agree with these authors to recognize their positive contributions and offer “constructive” criticism. We are shooting ourselves in the foot to always be purists by our definitions. 18 mins · Like

Thomas Baldwin We have to be realists and recognize that we’re not going to create a utopian, fair, just, and equitable society from the corrupt, evil one we have without a great deal of pain. It’s never been done!! Tell people the truth and see how many followers you have!

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This is what the plutocracy that Kissinger serves really thinks of the military. All that praise and worshipping on the media is just a thick curtain of hypocrisy to maintain morale among the deceived imperial troopers.

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